Ulster Folklore Part 2

[11] Mr. McKean kindly informs me that he has found this name or its modification "Collya" in Counties Armagh, Monaghan, and Tyrone; also near Cushendall, Co. Antrim, where the ceremony is called "cutting the Cailleagh." He was told this Cailleagh was an old witch, and by "killing" her and taking her into the house you got good luck. At Ballyatoge, at the back of Cat Carn Hill, near Belfast, in the descent to Crumlin, the custom is called "cutting the Granny." At Ballycastle, Co. Antrim, the plait or braid is called the "car-line."

[12] Dr. Frazer also describes this Devons.h.i.+re custom (see _Golden Bough_, "Spirits of the Corn and the Wild," vol. i., pp.

264-267).

[13] "Spirits of the Corn and the Wild," vol. i., pp. 304, 305.

[14] Vol. i., p. 115.

Ulster Fairies, Danes and Pechts[15]

The fairy lore of Ulster is doubtless dying out, but much may yet be learned about the "gentle" folk, and as we listen to the stories told by the peasantry, we may well ask ourselves what is the meaning of these old legends.

Fairies are regarded on the whole as a kindly race of beings, although if offended they will work dire vengeance. They have no connection with churchyards, and are quite distinct from ghosts. One old woman, who had much to say about fairies, when asked about ghosts, replied rather scornfully, that she did not believe in them. The fairies are supposed to be small--"wee folk"--but we must not think of them as tiny creatures who could hide in a foxglove. To use a North of Ireland phrase, they are the size of a "lump of a boy or girl!" and have been often mistaken for ordinary men or women, until their sudden disappearance marked them as unearthly.

A farmer in Co. Antrim told me that once when a man was taking stones from a cave in a fort, an old man came and asked him would it not be better to get his stones elsewhere than from those ancient buildings.

The other, however, continued his work; but when the stranger suddenly disappeared, he became convinced that his questioner was no ordinary mortal. In after-life he often said sadly: "He was a poor man, and would always remain a poor man, because he had taken stones from that cave."

The cave was no doubt a souterrain.

An elderly woman in Co. Antrim told me that when a child she one evening saw "a little old woman with a green cloak coming over the burn." She helped her to cross, and afterwards took her to the cottage, where her mother received the stranger kindly, told her she was sorry she could not give her a bed in the house, but that she might sleep in one of the outhouses. The children made Grannie as comfortable as they could, and in the morning went out early to see how she was. They found her up and ready to leave. The child who had first met her said she would again help her across the burn--"But wait," she added, "until I get my bonnet." She ran into the house, but before she came out the old woman had disappeared.

When the mother heard of this she said: "G.o.d bless you, child! Don't mind Grannie; she is very well able to take care of herself." And so it was believed that Grannie was a fairy.

I have also heard of a little old man in a three-cornered hat, at first mistaken for a neighbour, but whose sudden disappearance proved him to be a fairy.

In the time of the press-gang a crowd was seen approaching some cottages. Great alarm ensued, and the young men fled; but it was soon discovered that these people did not come from a man-of-war--they were fairies.

A terrible story, showing how the fairies can punish their captives, was told me by an old woman at Armoy, in Co. Antrim, who vouched for it as being "candid truth." A man's wife was carried away by the fairies; he married again, but one night his first wife met him, told him where she was, and besought him to release her, saying that if he would do so she would leave that part of the country and not trouble him any more. She begged him, however, not to make the attempt unless he were confident he could carry it out, as if he failed she would die a terrible death. He promised to save her, and she told him to watch at midnight, when she would be riding past the house with the fairies; she would put her hand in at the window, and he must grasp it and hold tight. He did as she bade him, and although the fairies pulled hard, he had nearly saved her, when his second wife saw what was going on, and tore his hand away. The poor woman was dragged off, and across the fields he heard her piercing cries, and saw next morning the drops of blood where the fairies had murdered her.

Another woman was more fortunate; she was carried off by the fairies at Cushendall, but was able to inform her friends when she and the fairies would be going on a journey, and she told them that if they stroked her with the branch of a rowan-tree she would be free. They did as she desired. She returned to them, apparently having suffered no injury, and in the course of time she married.

This story was told me by a man ninety years of age, living in Glenshesk, in the north of Co. Antrim. He spoke of the fairies as being about two feet in height, said they were dressed in green, and had been seen in daylight making hats of rushes. In Donegal I was also told that the fairies wore high peaked hats made of plaited rushes; but there, as in most parts of Ulster, and indeed of Ireland, the fairies are said to wear red, not green. In Antrim the fairies, like their Scotch kinsfolk, dress in green, but even there are often said to have red or sandy hair.

The Pechts are spoken of as low, stout people, who built some of the "coves" in the forts. An old man, living in the townland of Drumcrow, Co. Antrim, showed me the entrance to one of these artificial caves, and gave me a vivid description of its builders. "The Pechts," he said, "were low-set, heavy-made people, broad in the feet--so broad," he added, with an expressive gesture, "that in rain they could lie down and shelter themselves under their feet." He spoke of them as clad in skins, while an old woman at Armoy said they were dressed in grey. I have seldom heard of the Pechts beyond the confines of Antrim, although an old man in Donegal spoke of them as short people with large, unwieldy feet.

The traditions regarding the Danes vary; sometimes they are spoken of as a tall race, sometimes as a short race. There is little doubt that the tall race were the medieval Danes, while in the short men we have probably a reminiscence of an earlier race.

A widespread belief exists throughout Ireland that the Danes made heather beer, and that the secret perished with them. According to an old woman at the foot of the Mourne Mountains, the Danes had the land in old times, but at last they were conquered, and there remained alive only a father and son. When pressed to disclose how the heather beer was made, the father said: "Kill my son, and I will tell you our secret"; but when the son was slain, he cried: "Kill me also, but our secret you shall never know!" I have the authority of Mr. MacRitchie for stating that a similar story is known in Scotland from the Shetlands to the Mull of Galloway, but there it is told of the Picts.

We all remember Louis Stevenson's ballad of heather ale--how the son was cast into the sea:

"And there on the cliff stood the father, Last of the dwarfish men.

"True was the word I told you: Only my son I feared; For I doubt the sapling courage That goes without the beard.

But now in vain is the torture, Fire shall never avail; Here dies in my bosom The secret of heather ale."

The secret appears, however, to have been preserved for many centuries.

After visiting Islay in 1772, the Welsh traveller and naturalist, Pennant, states that "Ale is frequently made in this island from the tops of heath, mixing two-thirds of that plant with one of malt."[16]

Probably these islanders were descendants of the Picts or Pechts.

I do not know if there is any record of the making of heather beer in Ireland in later times, but I heard the story of the lost secret in Down, in Kerry, in Donegal, in Antrim, and everywhere the father and the son were the last of the Danes. Does not this point to the Irish Danes being a kindred race to the Picts? If we may be allowed to hold that the Tuatha de Danann are not altogether mythical, I should be inclined to believe that they are the short Danes of the Irish peasantry, who built the forts and souterrains. I visited some Danes' graves near Ballygilbert, in Co. Antrim; it appeared to me that there were indications of a stone circle, the princ.i.p.al tomb was in the centre, the walls built without mortar, and I was told that formerly it had been roofed in with a flat stone. Various ridges were pointed out to me as marking the small fields of these early people. I was also shown their houses, built, like the graves, without mortar. Within living memory these old structures were much more perfect than at present, many of them having the characteristic flat slab as a roof; but fences were needed, and the Danes' houses offered a convenient and tempting supply of stones. In the same neighbourhood I was shown a building of uncemented stone with flat slabs for the roof, and was told it had been built by the fairies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _SOUTERRAIN of KNOCKDHU Co. Antrim PLAN Drawn by Florence Hobson from the measurements made by M Hobson_]

In the same district I visited a fine souterrain at the foot of Knockdhu, which was afterwards fully explored and measured by Mrs.

Hobson. She describes it as "a souterrain containing six chambers, with a length of eighty-seven feet exclusive of a flooded chamber."[17] Mrs.

Hobson photographed the entrance to this souterrain, which is reproduced in Plate VII.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE VII.

ENTRANCE TO SOUTERRAIN AT KNOCKDHU.]

From the foregoing traditions it will be seen that Pechts, Danes, and fairies are all a.s.sociated with the remains of primitive man. I may add that the small pipes sometimes turned up by the plough are called in different localities Danes', Pechts', or fairies' pipes.

The peasantry regard the Pechts and the Danes as thoroughly human; with the fairies it is otherwise. They are unearthly beings, fallen angels with supernatural powers; but, while quick to revenge an injury or a slight, on the whole friendly to mankind. "It was better for the country before they went away," was the remark made to me by an old woman from Garvagh, Co. Derry, and I have heard the same sentiment expressed by others. They are always spoken of with much respect, and are often called the "gentry" or the "gentle folk."

We hear of fairy men, fairy women, and fairy children. They may intermarry with mortals, and an old woman told me she had seen a fairy's funeral. Now, do these stories give us only a materialistic view of the spirit world held by early man, or can we also trace in them a reminiscence of a pre-Celtic race of small stature? The respect paid to the fairy thorn is no doubt a survival of tree-wors.h.i.+p, and in the banshee we have a weird being who has little in common with mortal woman. On the other hand, the fairies are more often connected with the artificial Forts and souterrains than with natural hills and caves.

These forts and souterrains, as we have seen, are also the habitations of Danes and Pechts. They are sacred spots--to injure them is to court misfortune; but I have not heard them spoken of as sepulchres.

I have already mentioned that I have rarely, if ever, found among the peasantry any tradition of fairies a few inches in height. In one of the tales in "Silva Gadelica" (xiv.) we read, however, of the lupracan being so small that the close-cropped gra.s.s of the green reached to the thigh of their poet, and the prize feat of their great champion was the hewing down of a thistle at a single stroke. Such a race could not have built the souterrains, and probably owe their origin to the imagination of the medieval story-teller. The lupracan were not, however, always of such diminutive size. In a note to this story Mr. Standish H. O'Grady quotes an old Irish ma.n.u.script[18] in which a distinctly human origin is ascribed to these luchorpan or wee-bodies. "Ham, therefore, was the first that was cursed after the Deluge, and from him sprang the wee-bodies (pygmies), fomores, 'goatheads' (satyrs), and every other deformed shape that human beings wear." The old writer goes on to tell us that this was the origin of these monstrosities, "which are not, as the Gael relate, of Cain's seed, for of his seed nothing survived the Flood."[19]

It is true that in this pa.s.sage the lupracan or wee-bodies are a.s.sociated with goatheads; but whether these are purely fabulous beings, or point to an early race whose features were supposed to resemble those of goats, or who perhaps stood in totem relations.h.i.+p to goats, it would be difficult to say. What we have here are two medieval traditions, the one stating that the pygmies are descendants of Cain, the other cla.s.sing them among the descendants of Ham. Does the latter contain a germ of truth, and is it possible that at one time a people resembling the pygmies of Central Africa inhabited these islands?

Those who have visited the African dwarfs in their own haunts have been struck by the resemblance between their habits and those ascribed to the northern fairies, elves, and trolls.

Sir Harry Johnston states that anyone who has seen much of the merry, impish ways of the Central African pygmies "cannot but be struck by their singular resemblance in character to the elves and gnomes and sprites of our nursery stories." He warns us, however, against reckless theorizing, and says: "It may be too much to a.s.sume that the negro species ever inhabited Europe," but adds that undoubtedly to his thinking "most fairy myths arose from the contemplation of the mysterious habits of dwarf troglodyte races lingering on still in the crannies, caverns, forests, and mountains of Europe after the invasion of neolithic man."[20] Captain Burroughs refers to the stories of these mannikins to be found in all countries, and adds that "it was of the highest interest to find some of them in their primitive and aboriginal state."[21] He speaks of the red and black Akka, and Sir Harry Johnston also describes the two types of pygmy, one being of a reddish-yellow colour, the other as black as the ordinary negro. In the yellow-skinned type there is a tendency on the part of the head hair to be reddish, more especially over the frontal part of the head. The hair is never absolutely black--it varies in colour between greyish-greenish-brown, and reddish.[22] We have seen how Irish fairies and Danes have red hair, but I should infer of a brighter hue than these African dwarfs. The average height of the pygmy man is four feet nine inches, of the pygmy woman four feet six inches,[23] and although we cannot measure fairies, I think the Ulster expression, "a lump of a boy or girl," would correspond with this height. I do not know the size of the fairy's foot, but, as we have seen, both Danes and Pechts have large feet, and so has the African pygmy.[24] One of the great marks of the fairies is their vanis.h.i.+ng and leaving no trace behind, and Sir Harry Johnston speaks of the baboon-like adroitness of the African dwarfs in making themselves invisible in squatting immobility.[25]

Dr. Robertson Smith has shown that "primitive man has to contend not only with material difficulties, but with the superst.i.tious terror of the unknown, paralyzing his energies and forbidding him freely to put forth his strength to subdue nature to his use."[26] In speaking of the Arabian "jinn," he states "that even in modern accounts _jinn_ and various kinds of animals are closely a.s.sociated, while in the older legends they are practically identified,"[27] and he adds that the stories point distinctly "to haunted spots being the places where evil beasts walk by night."[28] He also shows that totems or friendly demoniac beings rapidly develop into G.o.ds when men rise above pure savagery,[29] and he cites the ancestral G.o.d of Baalbek, who was wors.h.i.+pped under the form of a lion.[30]

If we see, then, that early man, terrified by the wild beasts, whether lions or reptiles, ascribed to them superhuman powers, may not a similar mode of thought have caused one race to invest with supernatural attributes another race, strangers to them, and possibly of inferior mental development? The big negro is often afraid to withhold his banana from the pygmy, and the dwarfish Lapps and Finns have long been regarded as powerful sorcerers by their more civilized neighbours. In like manner the little woman, inhabiting her underground dwelling at the foot of the sacred thorn-bush, might well be looked upon as an uncanny being, and in after-ages popular imagination might transform her into the weird banshee, the woman of the fairy mound, whose wailing cry betokens death and disaster.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] Reprinted from the _Antiquary_, August, 1906.

[16] "Voyage to the Hebrides in 1772," p. 229. For a full discussion of the subject, see Mr. MacRitchie's "Memories of the Picts,"

in the _Scottish Antiquary_ for 1900.

[17] See "Some Ulster Souterrains," _Journal of the Royal Anthropological Inst.i.tute_, vol. x.x.xix., January-June, 1909. The plan was drawn by Miss Florence Hobson from the measurements made by Mrs.

Hobson.

[18] Rawl., 486, f.49, 2.

[19] "Silva Gadelica" (translation and notes), pp. 563, 564.